Redford on changing face of Sundance

In a recent interview at the Television Critics Association press tour (where he stopped by to promote the
Sundance Channel) Robert Redford shot back at complaints that the Sundance Film Festival has gone Hollywood.
"I don't think that's happened," he said. "I think Hollywood is just taking films from the festival
because they realize they have worth." Though the silver fox acknowledges that crowds have grown over the years
– "Once it started to roll and you had the success of films like Sex,
Lies, and Videotape and other films, then suddenly more people began to come ... Then the paparazzi came, and
then the fashion came. And it's like a pebble being dropped in a pond, but these ripples come out" – he
maintains that at its core, the festival has followed the same programming philosophy for the past twenty years. He
seems to lament the fact that the festival – his baby – gets such a bad rap from media focused on bling and
bloat. "When a media person comes in and looks at the festival, but from an outer tier, they're going to see a
completely different picture than the one we're programming," he said. "They'll think it's about Paris
Hilton, which is not about anything." I'm heading to Park City for the first time ever on Wednesday – let's
hope I'm given an opportunity to prove Bob right.